www.aaronkrerowicz.com
The Reduced Spice Opera Company of Brookline, MA
Basil Considine, Artistic Director
Premiere of Aaron Krerowiczs Simple Gifts: A Copland Opera
College of Fine Arts Concert Hall, Boston University
4/21/10
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND & PROGRAM NOTES:
1934. The Roaring 20s are history, the stock market crash is still a recent memory and the Great Depression is tightening its grasp on the fragile American economy. Food is scarce; jobs even more so. These desperate times have allowed many political parties to grow, and many artists have allied themselves with one party or another. In an effort to connect specifically with musicians, the Communist periodical New Masses sponsored a composition contest for the best mass-song setting of the poem Into the Streets May First by Alfred Hayes. Submissions included works by several prominent American composers, but it was 33-year-old Aaron Copland who claimed the prize. Coplands song premiered on April 29, 1934 at the Second Annual American Workers Music Olympiad, performed by the 800 voices that comprised the Revolutionary Workers Choruses of New York.
In 1941, Copland was selected by the Committee for Inter-American Artistic and Intellectual Relations to represent his country on a tour of Latin America. He was granted $3,100 for a four-month, ten-country expedition to perform, conduct, lecture, discuss and promote American music. All the while, Copland fastidiously maintained a detailed travel diary and dutifully wrote letters to friends and family around the globe.
Copland again toured to Latin America in 1947 as cultural ambassador for the State Department. Just as he did on his previous trip, Copland sustained contact with colleagues through his many letters.
Meanwhile, back in the states, the House Committee on Un-American Activities began investigating rumors of Communist infiltration in Hollywood. The motion picture industry was suspected of implanting Communist propaganda into films as an efficient and effective means of reaching the general public. The primary focus of the committees investigations was Hanns Eisler, one of Hollywoods leading film composers and brother of the former Communist agent Gerhart Eisler. On May 12, 1947, in Los Angeles, California, the Committee interrogated the composer, and later publicly labeled him the Karl Marx of the musical world.
Shortly thereafter, Eisler found himself on Hollywoods notorious blacklist and as a result struggled in finding consistent work. Petitions surfaced in Eislers support, backed by names such as Albert Einstein, Henri Mattise, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso. Fellow musicians Roger Sessions, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland organized a defense committee, and in an attempt to redeem their friend, Igor Stravinsky and Charlie Chaplin sponsored benefit concerts in Eislers name. Despite the efforts, Eisler received an official deportation order at a short formal hearing the following February 6th. A final farewell concert was organized and performed a few weeks later in Town Hall, New York. On March 26, 1948, Hanns Eisler and his wife departed the U.S., never to return.
In 1950, Copland applied for a Fulbright Fellowship with the intent of promoting American music in and around Rome. He was granted a budget of $3,250 and began his Italian residency on the first of January, 1951.
The original program for President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhowers 1953 inaugural concert included a performance of Coplands Lincoln Portrait. Upon discovery of a 1950 document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that included Copland in a catalogue of 151 allegedly Communist artists, Fred Busbey, a member of the House of Representatives, launched an immediate protest, demanding Lincoln Portrait be removed from the concert on the grounds of Coplands suspicious political past. In the end, Coplands music was not played for the concert, and the publicity of the scandal cause by Representative Busbey brought the composer to the attention of another, more threatening Congressional figure: Joseph McCarthy, Junior Senator from Wisconsin.
McCarthy petitioned Coplands music to the U.S. Department of State and was directly responsible for adding Copland to the Departments blacklist, thereby effectively banning his music from the 196 official American Libraries worldwide. On May 22, 1953, Copland received a subpoena from the Senator, summoning him to testify before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The interrogation took place in Washington D.C. on May 26, 1953.
CAST:
Daniel Ross- Aaron Copland, American composer
Sarah Gazdowicz- Aaron Copland, American composer
Jacob Cooper- Hanns Eisler, German composer
William Schuller- Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin Senator
ORCHESTRA:
Emily Chao, violin
Pat Locklin, clarinet
Keyondra Price, horn
Max Judelson, double bass
Patrick Yacono, piano
Shawn Rardon, percussion
Basil Considine, conductor
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Simple Gifts: A Copland Opera by Aaron Krerowicz, Part 2 of 3by akbluegrass279 views
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